No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Biden's Chief of Staff takes on Kevin McCarthy over Build Back Better

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

There is a new COVID variant and the GOP is trying to exploit it for political gain. Brian interviews White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain about the Build Back Better Act, he rebuts some of the most blatant attacks coming from the right on inflation and gas prices, and he offers his response to Kevin McCarthy after his 8.5 hour speech trying to block one of the most popular pieces of legislation of our lifetimes. And the co-founder & executive director of Data for Progress, Sean McElwee, joins to dive into what the polling says as far as the BBB Act is concerned and whether it shows any upside for moderates like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema when it comes to blocking that legislation.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the new COVID variant and how the GOP is trying to exploit it for political gain. I interview White House Chief of Staff Ron Clayne about the Build Back Better Act. He rebut some of the most blatant attacks coming from the right on inflation and gas prices, and he offers his response to Kevin McCarthy after his eight-and-a-half-hour speech trying to block one of the most popular pieces of legislation of our lifetimes. And the co-founder and executive director of Data for Progress, Sean McAwee, joins to dive into what the polling says as far as the Build Back Better Act is concerned, and whether it shows

any upside for moderates like Joe Manchin and Kierston Cinema when it comes to blocking that legislation. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So to the surprise of no one, there's a new variant called Omicron. It was first detected in Botswana, and cases have now sprung up in South Africa, Belgium, the UK, and Hong Kong, which means it's likely already in the U.S. According to scientists, the variant will be more transmissible than the Delta variant, which is now the dominant variant worldwide. And I know that sometimes we can have very, very short memories. But let's not try to forget that before the Delta variant, it legitimately felt like COVID was over. People were going out. Cases plummeted,

the country was opening back up, only to then get bombarded by an even higher number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths than we had before. Like, these variants are devastating. And so the last thing that we should do here is pretend that we don't need to heed these warnings. So a few basic points here. Get your vaccine or booster and encourage your loved ones to do the same. Like I said before, Omicron will be more transmissible than Delta, which was more transmissible than the original strain. Like, the science on the vaccines is settled. Virtually all of the deaths that have occurred since the vaccines have been available have been among the unvaccinated. You've heard this all before. The simple fact is that getting vaccinated now means that you'll have a better

chance of, A, not catching COVID, B, not spreading COVID, including to loved ones, and C, not dying if you do get a breakthrough case, which is, of course, possible even if the likelihood's lower. But now, given the emergence of this new variant, the right has already consolidated their talking points. Michael Knowles tweeted, spoiler alert, there's always going to be another variant. And the same talking points emerged all over the right, from these internet provocateurs all the way up to Fox News. And it really does tap into what Republicans think that this is about, or at least pretend to think this is about, which is that, like, Democrats want more variants. They want the virus to stay here so that they can tell you to wear masks and get vaccinated because Democrats

want to control you. That's the talking point, which is so aggressively backwards. First and foremost, because it's Democrats who are practically begging people to get vaccinated, which is the only way to get rid of these variants. When people are not vaccinated, that is how variants emerge. That is what allows the virus to mutate. So when you have the left pleading with everyone to get vaccinated so that the virus will stop mutating, so that we can be finished with this perpetual pandemic that doesn't exactly line up with the right-wing talking point that we want to be mired in this thing forever. There's also the fact that, politically speaking, Biden is undoubtedly taking a hit because of COVID. Americans voted him into office because he promised a return to normalcy from this

pandemic. And the fact is that we haven't seen a return to normalcy. Now, logically speaking, he got vaccines distributed to the entire country, lightning fast. He ushered through one of the biggest relief packages in history aimed at containing this pandemic. But the fact that there's still a huge subset of our population that refuses to get vaccinated means that there is a ceiling to how much Biden can do to contain this pandemic. Like, you need a fully vaccinated population to protect from the possibility of these mutations. And so Biden is budding up against the limits of what you can do without the unvaccinated Americans meeting him the rest of the way.

That's the reality of the situation, but most people don't see that. They just see that we're still wearing masks, that we're still seeing variants, that we're still getting boosters, when we were promised to return to normal. And I get how that could be frustrating. And I'm certain that it's having an impact on his approval rating with a number of people. even though he's done his job, and in fact, the people that he's relying on to get him the rest of the way there, the people who are overwhelmingly unvaccinated are disproportionately Republicans. That's the twisted irony here. It is Republicans exploiting Biden's inability

to get the U.S. back to normal while they themselves hold the keys to getting this country back to normal. And so instead of, oh, I don't know, just getting vaccinated, they'll tweet out things like, there's always going to be another variant when the fact is that the only reason that there is always going to be another variant is the very people tweeting out that there's always going to be another variant. And of course, you know, in a parallel universe where reason matters, that would be pretty simple to understand. But because all that matters is political wins, even in the face of immeasurable damage, like the needless loss of life to the tune of 700,000 Americans, Republicans have no desire to solve this problem because being able to exploit it in

the hopes of a midterm win is too valuable. And so they'll continue to exploit the problem with zero desire to fix it because the point is the destruction. The goal is the destruction. They want to be able to point to the problems, even those that are the result of their own doing and feast on them as long as possible because the top priority is ensuring not that Americans are safe, not that their own constituents survive,

not that the country can thrive, but that Democrats lose so that they can take power. And we see that theme over and over. They'll sink democracy and trust in our institutions if it means that they can win the next election. They'll sink trust in public health, and our nation's premier immunologists and epidemiologists so long as it means that they can pretend that they didn't completely fuck up this pandemic. They will destroy whatever they need to so long as they can win the news cycle,

because their only goal is their own power, which is what makes our job twice as hard on the left, because we not only have to swat down the perpetual barrage of misinformation, but we have to also make government work to show people that it can. We have to win on a policy front and on a messaging front. And we have to do it without the messaging apparatus that they have on the right. But if the last few years have taught us anything, is that the risks of not fighting that fight are too great.

So if you're listening now in November of an off year of a midterm cycle, thank you for staying engaged, because that in and of itself is already so important in terms of beating back a right-wing machine that's relied on apathy and ignorance to win for too long. Next up is my interview with White House Chief of Staff, Ron Clayne. Now I've got the White House Chief of Staff Ron Clayne. Thanks so much for coming back on. Thanks for having me.

Good to be back. Yeah. Well, you were my first guest, 81 weeks ago. You helped launch this thing with no clue what to expect from me, but you took a chance and I really appreciate that. So thank you. Thank you. I'm glad to see the great success you've had since then and much success in the future, too.

Thanks, thanks. Well, I guess it's fitting that the next time we'd speak, we'd be on the verge of passing the most transformative piece of legislation. in our lifetimes in the Bill Back Better Act, there is a lot in this bill. How do you plan on messaging in a way that communicates its provisions, which are enormously popular, but still doesn't offer so much that it all gets lost? Yeah. Look, I think it's a challenge.

It's the kind of challenge that's a great problem to have, being able to deliver for the American people, being able to deliver results, being able to change people's lives for the better. That's why we're here. That's what Joe Biden was elected to do. And if our biggest problem winds up being having to explain it well, you know, that's an important problem, but less important than the real problem of delivering the results. Look, I think our focus with Big Build Back Better right now is dealing with the pocketbook problems that Americans are having. The price of prescription drugs is too high. Build Back Better brings it down.

The price of health care is too high. We're going to address that. Price of elder care, taking your kids to preschool, all high costs. They're pinching people's pocketbooks. And then, of course, taxes. We're going to cut taxes for working families. And we're going to offer people a pretty simple choice. One of the two political parties wants to cut the cost of your health care,

cut the cost of your prescription drugs, cut the cost of your child care, and cut your taxes. The other party wants to defend drug companies, wants to defend the people who are charging these high prices, and wants to defend low tax rates for big corporations at the expense of raising taxes for middle class families. I think that's a very clear choice between where the two political parties stand. That's what's at stake when the build back better bill is on the Senate floor in the next few weeks. Yeah. And then, you know, I'm glad you brought all of those elements of this up because, you know, so often we hear this as this Democrats, big social spending bill. They're multi-trillion dollar spending bill. But in fact, this is a cost-cutting bill for the American people.

And you did bring up the fact that it would have to make its way through the Senate. So what will be President Biden's role to ensure that the. this stays intact in a caucus that seems to like to take a chainsaw of things. Well, look, I think, you know, I think the Senate has its role in our system, and as did the House and the House made some changes. The Senator is going to make some changes, and that's part of the legislative process. But what the president's going to drive is making sure a few core things remain as they need to be, which is the strong action we need to take to help families with these costs that are pinching them.

The other thing that's in that bill is a historic investment in fighting the climate crisis. One of the things the president was sent here to do was to take action on climate change. And this bill makes critical investments that will create jobs building our clean energy economy of the future. It will obviously both fight climate change and build us the kind of clean energy economy that will employ people here in the United States, transforming our energy system and then making things. We can export around the world to create jobs here at home and make the world pour towards a clean energy system. So we've got all that. Look, one of our red lines in this, though,

Brian, is we are not going to let taxes go up on people making less than $400,000 here. Instead, we're going to insist that finally, the big corporations that pay no taxes at all, the wealthiest people who've gotten even wealthier during this pandemic pay their fair share. And by doing that, We can protect the pocketbooks of working families in this country, deliver real price relief for the costs that pinch them and tackle the climate crisis. Switching gears to another piece of successful legislation, the bipartisan infrastructure package, there was a CNN article titled, Americans aren't feeling relief from President Biden's big Washington victory, and that was from November 18th, and it was referencing a bill that was signed on November 15th.

So, you know, it's been three days, Ron. more time do you need? The real question here is, when should we expect to see this infrastructure bill's effects? And politically speaking, will there be any tangible effects that Democrats can point to for midterms, which will be a referendum partly on that bill? Yeah, look, I think that it is an eight-year blue-collar blueprint to rebuild this country. And you're going to see those results over the entire period of time. But you will start to see some results immediately. In fact, we've seen one result already, which is the president, even before the bill was signed, launched his port action plan to increase the flow of goods through our ports to lower prices

to deal with the supply chain. And over the next 90 days, you're going to see, now that the bill's been signed, the improvement, further improvements at those ports, particularly the port of Savannah, Port of Los Angeles, Port of Long Beach, where so many goods come into this country. As we hit the holiday season, we want to make sure people have an amazing holiday season, amazing Christmas, get their gifts on time. The port action plan, and funded in part by the infrastructure bill, is going to make that possible. And then you're going to start to see us over the next few weeks and months, start to break ground on the long-term projects, break ground on roads and bridges, creating jobs and improving the flow of goods to the market by having better roads, better bridges

to get things where they need to go. It's going to take a little longer to get going on changing out the lead pipes in our country. But I do think you'll see some serious action on that in the coming weeks and months, as well as connecting every household in this country, a high-speed internet. So you're going to start to see the benefits. There are going to be tangible projects that people can point to all over this country in the next few weeks and months as we start to turn the shovels and get these projects going. Yeah. And these are projects, by the way, that are not just going to benefit Democrats, especially when you look at stuff like rural broadband. I mean, these are probably going to benefit, have an outsized influence on red areas. And so,

you know, that's a testament to the fact that President Biden came into office saying that he was going to do this, you know, work for both sides of the political spectrum, and that's exactly what he's doing. You know, for both of these bills, the bipartisan infrastructure framework and build back better, messaging is going to be key going into 2022. Given what we've seen from Republicans who have a messaging apparatus unlike anything on the left, you know, who are able to turn a Virginia gubernatorial election into a referendum on an academic framework that isn't even taught in schools, you know, given how sophisticated, how effective their messaging, you know, can be, notwithstanding that it's without any scruples, without accountability, without any

tethered to reality, how do you plan on selling these achievements in the face of what will be strong counter messaging? Well, you know, I'm starting today on this podcast. Look, I think we need to get out there. We need our voices, our messages out there, getting people where they are. And I think that obviously includes traditional places like cable television and Twitter and all these things, but also untraditional places like your podcast. We need to find our voters where they are.

That's the first thing. The second thing is we need a simple message. And I'd boil that message down to one word, results. We came into office at a time when the COVID was savaging this country and the economy was dead in the water. 4,000 deaths a day in the weeks before the president took office from COVID. Only 50,000 jobs a month. Look where we are 10 months later. Deaths are down 75 percent, and we're averaging over 500,000 jobs a month. There were 20 million

people on unemployment a year ago at Thanksgiving time. Today, there are two million people on unemployment. What a difference one year can make. So we're going to talk about the results. This president, with his allies in Congress, have delivered to this country over the course of these 10 months, 11, 12, 13 months on into next year. And I think, those results are going to be our key selling point. Joe Biden was elected to deal with the pandemic, to get the economy moving again. We have work to do on both. I'm not saying this is far from mission accomplished. We still have too many people dying from COVID. We still have problems with inflation, prices, gas prices. We have a lot of work to do on both fronts, but we have made

significant progress already, and we're going to make a lot more progress in the months ahead. Great. Well, we do have a few obstacles that have presented themselves. You touched on one earlier. You know, one surefire source of frustration for people is just like it always has been as high gas prices. Now, first off, you know, to be really clear about this, the president doesn't control gas prices. But there's been talk about a coordinated effort to release crude oil reserves or even halting U.S. oil exports to drive the cost down. Could you speak on this? Yeah, the president just before Thanksgiving announced a really an understanding. unprecedented plan to work with high growth economies around the world that are oil-consuming

countries, to release oil from their reserves to push the price of gasoline down. Look, I know how frustrating is for people to fill up their tanks and pay more than they paid in the past. I know how frustrating it is for people to see those prices as you drive by the signs as you go down the streets. But we're going to take action to try to reverse that, try to address that. And this strategic petroleum reserve release is the first step. The largest release out of the U.S. reserves in history, 50 million barrels over the next few months, and a coordinated release with other nations, including China, Japan, Korea,

the United Kingdom, India, to try to add to the global stabilization here of price. So, you know, it is always hard to get the price of gas down. We've taken some concrete steps to do that. I hope those steps will start to show results in the next few weeks as people see the price of gas slowly decline at their gas stations. Now, the other issue today is inflation. Obviously, the right is running wild with this. But still, I think it's important not to cast it off. I did see analysis this past week that because the dollar store raised its price 25 cents,

that it's basically like we have 25% inflation. if you were looking for the world's most tortured argument. But in reality, what is the White House doing to ease costs and supply chain constraints? And I know that you touched on what's happening at the port of Los Angeles earlier. Yeah. So look, I think inflation is a problem. I mean, and obviously people are paying more for some things. About a third of all inflation is energy.

And as I just discussed, we're trying to bring down the price of oil, the key driver of energy prices through the petroleum release. We also know that there are problems with the price of cars is high. Why is the price of cars high? It's high because we're coming out of the pandemic. A lot of people want to buy a car. There aren't enough cars. Why? Because the semiconductor industry isn't producing enough semiconductors.

So the president's been meeting with leaders in that industry to try to increase production of semiconductors so our car companies can produce more cars. It's a sign of a strong economy than Americans want to buy cars, but they shouldn't pay too much for those cars. And so we need our auto makers to make more cars that creates jobs. The cars tend to be newer cars. They tend to be cleaner cars. That's a good thing. So there's a lot of great potential if we can increase our auto production, lower the price of each car, have more cars available. We're also trying to tackle the problem of concentration. Part of the reason why you're paying a lot for meat, pork, and chicken is highly concentrated control of that industry that's squeezing

both farmers on the one end and consumers on the other end with big profits and big margins from the processors, from the people who buy the cows and the pigs and the chickens and turn them into products at our grocery stores. So we're looking at the issue of concentration there. But as I said before, I think the biggest thing we can do to bring down the cost families are feeling is to pass that build back better bill and cut the cost of health care. That's such a big costs for so many families, the cost of their health insurance premiums, the cost of prescription drugs, you know, those costs are crushing families. We have a bill that the Senate can take up in December to bring those costs down. You know, one cost, I understand it's not for every

family, but for a lot of families is insulin. There are people who pay $700, $900 a month for insulin. This bill caps that at $35 a month. Think of the difference for those families' budgets, their pocketbooks if you can bring their cost of insulin down 90 percent so there's a lot of good stuff in that build back better bill that will save people money will lower what they spend every day and will help them give give them relief for the kinds of high costs they're facing you know one other element is we there were 17 Nobel Prize winning economists who've said the build back better act would ease longer term inflationary pressures so how do people like kevin mccarthy and republicans more broadly reconcile saying that democrats shouldn't pass

past the Build Back Better Act because of inflation with the fact that the Build Back Better Act would have a net positive impact as far as inflation goes. Well, I can't explain their position. I can only explain ours. And ours is this is the action we need Congress to take to bring down the prices for everyday families, make people have a little, as the president like to say, a little breathing room. And they look at that monthly budget and they know their childcare costs are cut, their

health care costs are cut, their prescription drug costs are cut. Now, speaking of Kevin McCarthy, last week, Kevin McCarthy took it upon himself to show those last holdouts why the filibuster should be abolished. That was after eight and a half hour of speech. Ron, you watched the whole thing, is that right? I watched more of it than I probably should have. Yeah. How did you feel after that speech? Well, you know, as I said that night, I was reminded of the Carl Sandberg quote, that when you have the facts on your side, you argue the facts.

When you have the law on your side, you argue the law. When you have neither on the side, you just pound the table. loudly. And that's what we heard from Kevin McCarthy. In the eight and a half hour speech, he really didn't make much of an argument against the build back better bill. He just read a series of talking points from Fox News that had much, most of which had nothing to do with provisions of the bill at all. So what I was struck by in that speech was what in many ways, it was a validation of the soundness of the build back better bill because he had eight and a half hours. He couldn't really do damage to the bill. He was just able to offer up a bunch of conservative bromides,

falsehoods, talking points, stories about fictional swim meets that America competed against the rolled in in the 1940s, all kinds of stuff. But really, he didn't really lay a glove on the bill itself. That's why Democrats went to bed, got some sleep, got up the next morning, and passed the thing with every single Democrat in the House save one voting for. That's a kind of party unity. We have not seen before, really, around major presidential proposals. It's a testament to President Biden's leadership, a testament to Speaker Pelosi's leadership, and the entire leadership team in the House. Yeah.

And by the way, I think that was on purpose that he couldn't attack the Billback Better Act because what do you attack, that it offers, you know, lower insulin costs, universal pre-K for three and four-year-olds, reduce child poverty, giving hearing aids to seniors. There's no avenue. And so, of course, he has to, you know, divert to talking about swim meets from 80 years ago. Now, with all of that said, it's important to reconcile both being able to have accomplishments to tout like the Build Back Better Act, like the bipartisan infrastructure package, like the American Rescue Plan, and confronting the anti-democratic behavior that we see from

the right. And the most pressing issue right now, the most pressing attack that we're seeing right now is voting rights. Because, you know, let's be honest, we can cure cancer and end world hunger if the congressional districts are scientifically engineered so that Democrats can't win, And the legislation doesn't have that much of an impact. And this is it. These congressional districts are being drawn. They're being signed into law. Dave Wasserman said that so far the number of competitive districts, meaning the Biden

plus five margin districts and the Trump plus five margin districts, everything between those are down 58 percent. So this is happening. What's the next move on voting rights and what's the White House's position in terms of dealing with the filibuster? We need to deal with voting rights. very important. It's very urgent. I think when the Senate comes back after the Thanksgiving break, we're going to continue to meet with key senators to see if we can build a consensus

around how to move some of this vital legislation through the Senate, how to move the for the People Act through the Senate, how to move the John Lewis Voting Rights Act through the Senate. And we've shown that Democrats are ready to begin to debate those bills. We've had every Democrat vote to debate those bills. Republicans have blocked even debating those bills, let alone voting on them, just debating those bills they've blocked. So we've got to work with, again, Democrats in the Senate to get that moving forward. The president said he's open to changes in the filibuster. I said that earlier on this year. He reiterated that at a recent town hall in Ohio. And so we're going to talk to our Democrats in the Senate about the path forward

on these things. Voting rights is critical and we have to take action on. Great. Well, thanks so much for taking the time and, you know, best of luck landing this plane when it comes to the Build Back Better Act. Thanks, Brian. Thanks very much. Thanks again to Ron Clayne. Now we've got the co-founder and executive director of Data for Progress. Sean McAwee, thanks so much of coming on.

Thanks for having me and honored to follow the White House chief of staff. I got big shoes to fill. Yeah. So let's talk about the Build Back Better Act. I've obviously been, you know, following a ton of what you guys do with Data for Progress. I post your infographics all the time. There's so much that's popular within the Build Back Better Act, but based on polling, what's the strongest elements of this bill?

And can we infer what messaging would be the strongest from that? Yeah, absolutely. So I think when we're talking about the Build Back Better Act and stuff, we really want to focus on is the stuff that hits people right in the wallet. And so there's a new insulin price cap. There's the negotiation of prescription drugs. something that's going to deliver real concrete benefits to voters, particularly sort of older voters, who often show up in those sort of off-cycle midterm elections. So we really want to be talking

about that aspect. We also can talk about the home-based care services. So this is a really popular provision in the bill. It'll help older folks and people with disabilities get care in their homes. This saves actually a lot of money. Putting people into nursing homes is really expensive. And if they can have someone who comes by their home, maybe it's once, maybe it's twice a week to help them. That saves a lot of money. It keeps people in their homes and it keeps them out of the nursing homes where we saw there were a lot of deaths during the coronavirus pandemic. Another really popular provision. And what I love about this is it hits people at two points of the life cycle. We really want to talk about the benefits that people can see throughout their

lives. And so this is something great because if you're a millennial, particularly older millennials, or if you're a Gen X, you're starting to worry about your parents. You know, they're sort of getting older. How are they going to be cared for? This is a policy that speaks to you. If you're an older person yourself, you're starting to think to yourself, like, wow, I've been seeing a lot of deaths in nursing homes, really concerned about this. You know, what are my options?

And the home-based care services speak directly to that. So, rhodium analysis of the clean energy provisions shows that the clean energy provisions is bill will dramatically reduce utility bills at a time when people are worried about the prices of electricity, prices at the pump, prices in home heating, you know, these types of clean energy provisions can really pop. There's also a lot of domestic manufacturing requirements on these provisions that I think really should get more attention. So we're seeing in states like Georgia, companies are bringing solar manufacturing to the state of Georgia because they know that the Build Back Better Act is going to incentivize them to bring those jobs here to America.

I think that if we're talking about the labor market, right, what's one thing that keeps people out of labor market, high costs of child care? Build Back Better Act solves that. And so I think what you're seeing consistently with these is what I really would like to do is try to tie the problems that people are facing in the economy right now to the very specific provisions of the Build Back Better Act. This is a piece of legislation certainly is going to be transformative. and put us on the sort of front edge of the sort of clean electricity transformation. But it's also something that we can speak to very specific concerns that voters are facing in terms of the higher prices for electricity, higher prices for prescription drugs,

that we are actively solving. Well, on the other side of that coin, are there any notes of caution, according to the polling, regarding what messaging to steer clear of as we head into midterms? Yeah, so I think we really want to focus in on that idea that this is something that's solving real tangible problems in people's lives. Things that sound big, transformative for a lot of independence and Republicans who are not so comfortable with, you know, the big transferations we want to make. We might really just want to focus in on how this is going to make their daily lives better. I think climate power had a great ad that really just hit. How is this bill sort

of addressing the costs in your life? And I think that we need to have more ads that are sort of really tangible because the biggest thing I would say that's been our messaging failure is right now this bill is being sold and it's described in the media as either a 3.5 or $2 trillion reconciliation bill. I mean, imagine if Sony sold their PlayStation said it was a PlayStation as a $500 game box, right? Just described it. It's like it's a $500 game box. That's how we're describing this bill in the media. And people don't know what's in it. So one of the biggest things we've had, and there was a great CBS poll, and we've replicated this with our partners and Investors in America. When you ask people, like, what is in the bill? The biggest thing

they know is the price tag. And then the second biggest thing they know, sadly, is some of the provisions that ended up getting cut out. So what we really want to do is get people focused on the things that are in the bill, getting them understanding those things that are in the bill. And when we actually did a test with Investors in America, people didn't think build back better was going to have a big impact on their lives. It's right about mutual. And we ask, does this make you better off or worse off. When we went through the provisions, people like, oh, that provision, that's great for me. So really talking to this sort of specificity of the policies to the sort of benefits that people are going to be seeing, I think is right. And then on some of the

proposals, I think things like the child tax credit, the temptation is to talk about the parents who are benefiting from this. And parents who get the child tax credit, we've actually seen in our research really like the idea. The problem is the voters who are getting it. So we need to show those voters how the child tax credit benefits everyone. And so the messaging that we've been pushing on this is child tax credit is going to keep kids in school. It's going to create opportunities for upward mobility. It's going to make sure that kids don't get involved in crime. It's going to make sure that kids have a chance to sort of get a better life and create jobs here in America. So really emphasizing those sorts of universalist benefits, take another example, the child

care provisions. People are going to benefit from the child care provisions. No, they're going to benefit from the child care provisions. So we want to do is tell those people who aren't necessarily going to get that check in the mail or see that sort of 7% cap on their income. How do they benefit? And so the messaging there, something about how, you know, this will help more people get into the workforce, prevent those labor shortage you've been seeing. We really want to sort of universalize the benefits that are sort of like particular and then take the sort of package and particular lies how these benefits will solve problems for all Americans. Yeah, I mean, it goes for any of these issues, right?

Like, take the child tax credit, for example, if people are getting that $300 per child, I mean, that allows them to go and spend that money and stimulate the economy. And if you're a job creator, if you're a business owner, that will help you as well, having more money in the economy, having the economy stimulated. It doesn't just help the people who are spending the money. It helps the people who are selling goods and services, and that helps everybody in exchange. And what other just quick note on the broad macro politics of this? I think it's really important to note is that when we're talking about the sort of messaging,

we are not in a situation like we were in 2010 in which the sort of right-wing ecosystem has totally dominated the discussion of this bill with the messaging around death panels. This is still a much more popular bill. I think the ATA was a very important piece. legislation, and we should have passed it absolutely. But this bill actually tests quite a bit better. If you look at a political scientist named Christopher Warshaw, he tracks all of the public polling on this bill, and he's done it for every major presidential initiative going back to the 1990s. And he's found that this is much more popular than the ACA was at the time, which I think

just is a level setting in terms of we still have not seen any public polling from any neutral source, not including the great stuff we do because we're progressive, not including the stuff from the conservative outlets, neutral sources. We've never seen any poll having this piece of legislation underwater. And that is not true of anything that happened under Donald Trump. Well, I'm glad that you brought up the popularity of this legislation because despite that massive popularity, you know, there still does seem to be a disconnect between the popularity of the legislation that Democrats passed and the popularity of Democrats themselves. And so even despite passing the American Rescue Plan, which had like 70% support,

and despite passing the bipartisan infrastructure framework, which two-thirds of American support, while those bills were popular, it doesn't seem the Democrats got the credit once they passed. And so the same thing seems to be happening. You know, obviously we hope that will change with Bill Beck better coming through the pipe. But what do you attribute that to, that disconnect between the popularity of the legislation and the popularity of the party that's trying to enact that legislation? No, it's actually a great question, and it's something I think we're all wrestling with right now

as we sort of get ready to pass these bills and start to sell them. I would say that one big thing, there's a sort of famous, it was attributed to Nancy Pelosi as a Gaff, and when she said, you know, we got to pass this bill so you can see what's in it, and sort of the right pretended like she was saying that she didn't know what's in it. But what was actually happening is she was. facing the same question that we're facing today, which is we're tearing our hair out talking about the child care provisions. We're so excited about the clean energy provisions, the home-based

care, which I think is just going to be transformative. And a difficulty is the way that the media tends to cover this type of stuff is they tend to have a stuff that has conflict. So home-based care services has been really pretty safe throughout the entirety of the debate. It came down in terms of the number, but it's always been there. And so there hasn't been lots of media coverage on home-based care services. And so that means, like, what we're hoping is once that gets across the finish line, the media will have less incentive to do these sorts of stories on, you know, mansion and cinema, say X, Biden says Y, and start actually being like, oh, you know, heck, we have to tell the voters what is in this piece of legislation to do our jobs.

as the, as the medium. So I think that's one thing. The other thing is, is we do have to win the win, which is we have to make sure that when we pass this piece of legislation, we talk about it, we talk about it a lot, and we talk about the very specific provisions that are benefiting voters. So I think the rescue plan is really instructive here. It just so happens magically across the country. State governments across the country are in better fiscal positions than they've been in decades. That didn't just happen like magic. That happened because of the American Rescue Plan. And we need to win that win.

And I actually haven't seen a lot of winning that win, touting the effects that the American Rescue Plan has had on state budgets. And look, I think there's definitely media that sort of mediating it. But I do think that there's been another extent to which the entire party has been heads down in negotiation. And it has made it really hard for us to sell this package quite a small. much to voters. On the broader point, there is always going to be the difficulty that there are a lot of voters who, even if we did have a great message with them, we don't have a mechanism to reach them. You recall during the Affordable Care Act, Kentucky voters who loved the Connect exchange, but didn't necessarily like the Affordable Care Act. That's always going to be a problem in politics, but we can, I think, to a large extent, begin mediating that once we are in the point of there's no more process stories to be told about this. It's time for journalists. It's time for the Democratic progressive side of the aisle to start telling our story about this piece of legislation. And I mean, obviously, I do think we could have done more on the rescue plan. And I think

we need to learn that lesson and take it forward. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I said last week on this podcast, you know, we passed the Billback Better Act and we spend the next 350 days before midterms pointing to, you know, see those roads, that's Democrats, that broadband Democrats. Universal pre-K is Democrats. you know, lower prescription drug prices, capped insulin prices, whatever it is, then we just push that on a daily basis because just like you said, I mean, the vacuum that was created in terms of messaging with the ACA was filled with bullshit about death panels, you know?

Like, that was a real thing that actually enveloped our entire political discourse. And, you know, it seems laughably crazy, but the fact that we couldn't celebrate what at that time was the most transformative piece of health care legislation in our lifetimes because we were trudging through the bullshit that was death panels is just a, you know, a lesson to be learned for this time around. And I'd say we're in a good spot here. To my, I mean, maybe if you track the sort of Fox News better than I do, I haven't really seen any part of this bill that they've been able to sink their teeth into yet. And so I do just think, you know, sorry I didn't interrupt you, but I do just

think, like, we are in a better spot there, and that does feel good to me. Well, the only thing that they're pushing is the talking points about inflation, which is especially ironic because, you know, we had 17 Nobel Prize winning economists say that the Built Back Better Act would help ease long-term inflationary pressures. So, but yeah, other than that, they, what are they going to push back against? You know, like, do they want to be the party of higher insulin prices, you know? Now, one thing that you had mentioned was the procedural elements of this and the horse fight and the way, you know, as we push to actually get this thing passed, obviously a big hurdle that we're facing right now is Kirsten Cinema and Joe Manchin

once this thing gets into the Senate. Based on polling, is there any upside, maybe that we're not seeing from the outside for Joe Manchin and Kirsten Cinema not to support Build Back better? Yeah, so I'd see there's a really great lesson in political science, which is that people tend to be symbolically conservative and operationally liberal. So what does that mean? It means exactly what we're seeing with the bill back better plan. And if you've ever actually had the opportunity to talk to a school voter on this and you really go through, you'll say, hey, what do you think about the child tax credit?

And they'll say, oh, I like it, but I think you need to cap the income. And it's like, well, as it happens, that's already been done. The income is capped on that. And then you say, okay, well, what do you think broadly about the bill? And then they'll say something like, you know, I like it, but I'm worried about like broad government spending inflation. Each individual component, they're supportive of, but that's sort of broader inflation concern. And so what you have to understand that Mansion and Cinema are doing is they're actually just trying to get as many stories as possible in the media that say

Mansion and Cinema aren't like other Democrats, right? Like Mansion and Cinema are like they want these process stories about how they're fighting with the party, that is their sort of strategy. I think that had the chance to really sort of dig into the details of the clean electricity performance program. I think he would have been more sympathetic to it. I think that the specific things that they're picking to attack do not make a ton of sense from a sort of populace perspective. You know, higher taxes on billionaires. We actually did a really cool thing that was inspired by a lot of Kaiser polling, we asked people about the billionaire's tax with people who said they liked it. We gave a really

strong argument against it. About 9% of them flipped for people who didn't like it. We gave our best argument for it. About 24% of them flipped. So this is an issue where when people hear about the arguments, more of them flipped supporting than flipped to opposing. And so I just think that, I mean, cinema has been really hard on the prescription drugs. So they did not pick the parts of this bill that would make sense from a we are going to try to make this bill more popular uh they pick the parts of this bill that they sort of make sense from a we want to get a bunch of stories of democrats being mean to us so we shore ourselves up and i would say for the health of the party i don't think that's good why do i not think it's good it's because you know mansion cinema aren't up in

24. It's Warnock that's up in 2022. It's, it's Kelly that's up in 2022. It's Hassan that's up. It's Cortez-Mastow. And when they do all of this attacking, the Democratic brand is overspending, it's actually reached a lot of voters in my view as the critique of these four senators who are actually on the line because it says, like, why aren't you attacking this stuff harder? And so I think that they're actually punishing our swing-seat Democrats that are up, to protect themselves, but cinema is going to be open in 2024, which is a presidential cycle. It'll be really hard for a distinction from the president. We've seen that. And I think Mansions fairly likely to retire. And so I really do worry that they have sort of done this in a way

that is really not optimal for our party overall and really actually not optimal for the piece of legislation. Their critiques haven't really been aimed, in my view, at making this piece of legislation more popular or function better. It's mostly been aimed at sort of generating media that's beneficial to their sort of reputations by sort of showing them as mavericks against the party. But it really has, I think, ultimately been detrimental, even if I sort of understand what they're doing, if that makes sense. Yeah. To be a maverick, like also, I mean, when you look at someone like John McCain who has that reputation, he did it on something that was broadly popular. They're predicating their maverickness, or at least Kirsten Cinema's maverickness

on something that is wholly unpopular. So it doesn't exactly. even follow that brand of being a maverick well right right you know what you know what mccain split from his party on right he split from his party on prescription drugs um and and on big money in politics right like he's split with his party on prescriptions drugs big money in politics these are two issues cinema doesn't want to get rid of the filibuster to pass s one um and she's really been a stickler on the prescription drugs so it's not like she's bucking us on stuff that we're not in the right on the public opinion on. Well, now, looking forward to 2022, you brought up 2022. And given what you've seen work among Republicans, what are the most effective tools that we should employ to drive

turnout? In terms of turnout, I think we need to do three big things this cycle. First, we need to consolidate our sort of growing base that is a lot of suburban voters, a lot of younger voters. We need to consolidate those voters to keep them on our side. I think for that, big things are, let's talk about Marjorie Taylor Green. Let's talk about Matt Gates. Let's talk about the sort of extremism that we are seeing from the Republican side. The anti-democratic actions were seen from the other side. These voters were not sufficiently mobilized in Virginia because they were not seeing democracy

on the ballot. They were not seeing reproductive rights on the ballot. They were not seeing a choice between extremism on the ballot because Glenn Yonkin, I believe is an extreme person, but he presented to voters is very unextreme. And we need to remind our voters that extremism is on the ballot this cycle. I think that'll be easier to do in 2022 than it was in this year. Just because I think it's going to be a nationalized election, so it'll be easier to sort of tell the story of Kevin McCarthy, of Matt Gates.

Ultimately, if you vote for Glenn Yonkin, I think it's a bad idea. But that does not mean that Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gates run the country. It means that Glenn Yonkin runs Virginia. And so I think we need to consolidate our base. I think we need to tell that extremism argument. The second thing we need to do is we need to make real gains with African-American and Latino voters. We are seeing erosion there.

You know, there's a debate as to quite how bad this is, and it's really tough to tell. We're still waiting for voter files to update after Virginia and New Jersey. But I will say, from my perspective, it's really hard to look at these border districts and not think that something is happening here. And so I think for those voters, we need to tell a story of an economy that's improving. We need to tell a story about how black and Latino labor market participation, unemployment rates are lower than ever, and we're doing concrete benefits to these voters that are going to sort of mobilize them to turn out for us.

And the third thing I think we need to do is I think we need to demobilize our opposition. And I think the way that we do that is we tell these policy stories about things like home care services. These are things like home care services, insulin prescription drugs. We really message to older voters like, you know, hey, the Democrats are actually doing really good stuff for you. Are you like really that sort of excited to like get rid of the Democrats who are doing good things for you? Or maybe you want to vote for Democrats or maybe do you even want to sort of sit this one out? because there's really not massive stakes that are on the line for you. Ultimately, Democrats are sort of governing in a way that is beneficial to you

and that you're seeing the benefits for. So I think that those are the three things. And I do think that that last thing, it's partially just a sort of boring the opposition play, but I think it's also a persuasion play. I think it is making the case to senior older voters. Maybe there is something here with the Democrats in terms of prescription drugs that we're actually delivering that Republicans weren't able to deliver home care that we're able to deliver. But I think it's those three things. We need to sort of really consolidate our sort of new

electorate. I think we need to re-energize and engage. Sometimes this is turnout, but sometimes this is persuasion for voters who felt like we weren't doing enough to ensure that sort of black and Latino labor market, you know, numbers were improving. And then I think the third is we really want to sort of make the opposition feel like these actual policy benefits are benefiting their wives, and they should either be voting for us or, at a minimum, like, not voting for the Republicans, or we're going to tear it down. We'll leave it there. Sean, thank you so much for taking the time, and thanks for the work that you do at Data for Progress. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I really look forward to this coming out. Thanks again to Sean. That's

it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.